Foggy driving in Dubai

Unless you’ve experienced it, you probably don’t know that, for a few days each year, the sunny emirate of Dubai disappears entirely under a thick blanket of early-morning fog. It forms on autumn and spring mornings due to high humidity, clear skies and contrasting day and night temperatures. Without fail, it results in displays of jaw-droppingly bad driving.

This week has been particularly bad. According to police, on Tuesday, early morning visibility ranged in places from zero to 10 metres. And the result? 418 traffic-related emergency calls between 5am and 8am on Tuesday, and a 36-car pile-up thatleft two vehicles burnt out.

That’s nothing, though, compared to March 2008, when 350 people were injured and three killed in a fiery 60-car pile-upin fog on the Abu Dhabi to Dubai highway. In April this year, 60 people were injured and one person died in a127-vehicle accidenton the same road. Police estimated that most cars involved were travelling at 120kph (75mph) despite visibility of less than 50 metres.

Apart from speeding and not leaving enough stopping distance, which are obviously the underlying causes of all these accidents, a big problem is driver mentality. Many of Dubai’s expatriate residents come from countries unfamiliar with high-speed driving, let alone with fog. Many labour under the illusion that turning on the car’s hazard lights activates a magical force field around the vehicle, allowing the driver to tailgate down the highway at 140kph (87mph) in dense fog without use of fog lights.

For those of you who haven’t seen this chilling sight, believe me, I’m not joking.

Every year, newspapers and online forums are swamped with arguments about the use of hazard lights in fog. The prevailing belief is that fog is a hazard, ergo hazard lights need to be used, never mind that people then are then unable to tell if a vehicle is indicating or, worse, has come to a standstill in front of you.

“Why should we not use hazard lights in fog?” a Gulf News reader called Obaydah wrote on the paper’s website yesterday. “I’ve just received my driving license and, when I face fog I turn the hazard lights on in order to warn fellow drivers.” (Um, thanks.)

The argument has been going on for longer than I’ve been in Dubai but, until residents are properly educated on how to drive in fog, or until the police simply close the roads when it’s foggy, accidents will continue. Meantime, click on this7 Daysgallery for some ethereal images of the fog sitting over Dubai’s Sheikh Zayed Road.

Annabel Kantaria is a journalist who moved to Dubai long before most people knew where it was. She doesn’t ride a camel to work; has never seen a gold-plated golf buggy and only rarely has pink champagne for breakfast. Follow her on Twitter: @BellaKay